beet leaf roll

Ukrainian Beet Leaf Rolls (holubtsi/holopchi/Голубці)

Recipe Recommendation

These are something that I remember my Ukrainian grandmother making. Most recipes online for these include a creamy dill sauce, but hers were filled with cottage cheese. To make them fancy you could collect juice from one beet and make it contribute to the water content, which will give the buns a pink blush colour.

beet leaf roll
pink beet leaf roll

Makes 12 rolls

Ingredients

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour + a little extra for dusting when kneading
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp white sugar
  • ¾ tbsp yeast
  • 1 cup lukewarm water
  • ¼ cup melted butter, slightly cooled
  • 12+ fresh beet leaves, washed and dried (extra in case of breakage)
  • ¾ cup full-fat cottage cheese (or slightly drained low-fat cottage cheese)
  • 1 tbsp dried dill

Directions

  1. Bread: If you have a stand mixer your life will be nice and easy and I’ll assume you know what you’re doing if you have one, but this dough is nice and soft so kneading it by hand is not so much a chore as it is a meditative task.
    • If using instant yeast, combine the yeast directly with the other dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt) in a bowl or the bowl of your mixer. If using traditional yeast, you combine with the sugar and water and let sit to activate for a few minutes while you combine the flour and salt the meantime.
    • Once you have your dry ingredients mixed, add your warm water/warm water with sugar and yeast, and the melted butter. If the butter is too hot it will kill the yeast, so take care to cool it a bit beforehand or to take care to pour it in the bowl slowly, potentially even while mixing. Mix by hand or in stand mixture until you have a soft and tacky dough.
    • Take the dough out of the bowl and knead it on the counter for about 10 minutes or until you can stretch a little piece into a window without it tearing.
    • Once kneaded, return your dough to the bowl with some oil, cover, and place in a warm location to proof until doubled in size, approximately for 1 hour.
  2. Filling and rollin’
    • Mix the cottage cheese with dill and add a pinch of salt if desired. Wash and lightly dry the beet leaves, and remove the long, fibrous stems (these can be added to soup). Take the dough out of its bowl and onto a lightly floured counter. With a knife, separate the dough into 12 equally-sized pieces.  Take a piece, round out the shape, then flatten it. Put a tablespoon of the cottage cheese in the centre and carefully close up the filing, either by folding the bun into a log-shape or into more of a sphere (do whatever works for you). You’ll probably want to stretch the dough out a bit more than what I’ve done in the photo below.
      stretch and fill
      roll leaf
    • Wrap the dough in a beet leaf and place on a lined baking sheet. Cover, and let proof for another 45 minutes in a warm location. You’ll want to start heating up your oven to 350°F somewhere within this time frame, depending on how long it takes.
    • Bake for 25-30 minutes. The tops should be golden and bottoms of the rolls should look uniformly brown as well. Because the cheese is cooked these will be fine to store on the counter in an airtight container for up to 3 days, but they are best fresh out of the oven.